[gentoo-dev] Mesa >=3.5 masked!?

["José Fonseca" <j_r_fonseca@yahoo.co.uk>]

I noticed that Mesa >= 3.5 is masked but I don't understand why.

In package.mask says:

   #mesa 3.5 apparently breaks source compatibilty with 3.4.2 and we should
   #stay with 3.4.2 'cause so many apps depend on it.  (drobbins, 26 Jan 
2002)
   #sad but true, we're stuck at 3.4.2.
   #
   #think we should try mesa 4.0.1 sometime, although including glu in the 
xfree
   #ebuild seems to have good results.
   #azarah (29/01/2002)

I don't see how the first comment can be true as Mesa is an implementation 
of the OpenGL standard which, besides of source compatibility, also has 
binary compatibility within a platform. Mesa releases notes also don't 
mention nothing like that.

Regarding the second comment I found the referring bug number 245. It says 
that NVIDIA can't use the SGI libGLU.la 1.3 included in Mesa >=3.5. If so 
then why is the same SGI libGLU 1.3 available trhu the sgi-oss-glu ebuild? 
Stranger is that the "Nvidia OpenGL Configuration mini-HOWTO" 
(http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Nvidia-OpenGL-Configuration/) uses Mesa 
4.0.1 in the tutorial, but on the other hand the author does state that 
"not had time to test all the procedures"...

So it seems that there is quite a bit of misunderstanding. Is it mine or 
should I fill in a bug report?

José Fonseca